Republicans vote to deny climate change

House GOPRep. Fred Upton (R-Miss.) is among the deniers who sit on the House energy committee.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee wasted a good chunk of time Tuesday on yet more anti-environmental legislation that doesn’t stand a snowflake’s chance in climate-changed hell of becoming law. H.R. 3826, The Electricity Security and Affordability Act, would suspend the EPA’s proposed climate rules for power plants.

And for bonus points, the committee threw out an amendment to the doomed bill that would have acknowledged that climate change is real.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), presumably tired of yawning her way through anti-scientific charades, added the amendment, merely acknowledging the banal fact that greenhouse gas pollution “threatens the American public’s health and welfare” by contributing to climatic changes. Here’s ClimateProgress explaining how the Republicans responded:

[The bill] passed in Tuesday’s committee, but the amendment, which would have placed on the record that the committee accepts that climate change is happening and is caused by greenhouse gas pollution, did not.

Twenty-four E&C [Energy & Commerce Committee] members — all Republicans — voted against the amendment. Among them was E&C Chair Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who has said before that he doesn’t think climate change is caused by human activity, and Joe Barton (R-TX), who also questions humans’ role in climate change. …

This isn’t the first time House Republicans have rejected amendments stating the reality of climate change. In 2011, House Republicans voted down amendments that called on Congress to accept that climate change is real, man-made, and a human health threat.

How could the Republicans on the energy committee be so unfathomably stupid as to continue to claim that climate change is some kind of dystopian fantasy, despite all the science to the contrary?

Maybe they aren’t stupid. Maybe there’s another explanation. “In total,” ClimateProgress reported, “the Republicans who voted to deny climate change have accepted about $9.3 million in career contributions from the oil, gas, and coal industries.”